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PHDVirtual has released an updated version of their famous Virtual Backup solution (formerly esXpress). This version fully supports VMware vSphere 4.1, and is one of the first (if not THE first) of the 3rd party “high tech virtual backup only” to support vSphere 4.1

I was very quick into upgrading my test environment to vSphere 4.1 (right after the general release), breaking the PHDvirtual backup in the process. For days the environment failed to backup, because vSphere 4.1 introduced a snapshot issue with esXpress. PHDvirtual worked hard to get vSphere 4.1 supported, and on 9/17/2010 they released version 4.0-4 which did just that.

So I upgraded my test environment to PHDvirtual 4.0-4. Right after the upgrade I forced a reinstall on the ESX nodes to 4.0-4 from the 4.0-4 GUI appliance, and I kicked of an initial backup by renaming a VM from the VI client to include [xPHDD] in the VM name. PHDvirtual Backup picked it up, renamed the VM back and commenced performing the backup. It just worked straight away. Even CBT was still functional, and my first Windows VM backed up again with only 2.2[GB] in changed blocks. Awesome!

From the initial tests it shows that both speed and stability are just fine, not very different from the previous release. Still fast and definitely rock solid. Highly recommended!

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